Notre Dame Senior School

Anna King

Notre Dame School is an independent Roman Catholic day school for girls aged 2-18 and boys aged 2-7. We welcome families of all faiths and none.

At Notre Dame Senior School we offer a holistic, personalised and nurturing education in a secure and stimulating environment. Our girls are at the centre of everything we do. Their physical and mental well-being is as important as their academic achievements - pastoral care is embedded at the heart of our whole approach to education.

We are always looking to improve and all staff are encouraged and supported in continually striving to enrich the educational experience. We have a range of dynamic strategies which together assure the delivery of an exemplary all-round education, as recognised across the board in our 'Excellent' ISI Inspection Report in 2017.

A detailed teaching and learning quality assurance programme is in place, which focuses on five categories; teaching, learning, differentiation, behaviour and assessment. Year-on-year tracking shows impressive rises in all five areas. 'Learning walks' and marking reviews allow middle and senior managers to monitor standards and share good practice. The focus on assessment and collaborative marking has included pupils in the process and given them greater ownership over their own academic progress.

The Lestonnac Approach is our fully embedded resilience strategy which has been further enhanced recently with the appointment of a student Counsellor. The Counsellor is not only available to counsel girls on an individual basis but is actively looking to promote positive social and emotional wellbeing throughout the whole school.

Sport and the Arts are the heart and soul of the school. The opening of our state-of the-art all-weather pitches (hockey, netball, tennis and athletics) in 2017 took our sporting facilities to new heights and we are further enhancing our field sports on newly acquired land. Our professional 360 seater theatre stages numerous and varied productions and performances each year and a new Art block is imminent to further enrich our highly successful Art and Textiles curriculum.

It is the integration of all these strands - academic challenge, quality of teaching and learning, student and teacher collaboration, well-being and resilience and excellence in Sport and the Arts, which allows us to fulfil our aim of providing an exemplary holistic education. Our academic value added (in top 8% nationally) and examination results (52% A*/A grades at A level) speak for themselves and are particularly impressive given our broad intake.

Notre Dame is built on 400 years of educational experience: The Company of Mary Our Lady was founded in Bordeaux in 1607 to educate girls, and Notre Dame is one of some 300 educational foundations around the world that now come under this umbrella. To ready our pupils for the wider world, to live life to the full, we believe that our shared mission and purpose help our children to aspire to be the best they can be in in all their endeavours, during their school years and beyond.